Pickles and Bottles

When it rains…err…it rains… August 17, 2009

Its mid-August and the monsoons are still dodging Chennai. Not that I follow seasons and complain when they dont go by the calendar…but I sure am one of those people who, when in school, was taught to request the rains to go away bcoz some unknown “little johny” wanted to play…who cares if Johny played or not…why cant I just say “I want to play…” and let to choose if I wanted the rains to be around or go away while I play?!

A rainy drive on East Coast Road

Rains simply meant…waking up to the smell of wet white shoe polish and damp socks on a Monday morning…after a night of sleeping with the canvas shoes next to the pillow in a vain attempt to let it dry under the fan…then when you finally get ready and in the first step out of home you put your leg into that puddle of water that you so wanted to dodge…and end up with a wet brown patch like the one that Gorbachev had on his head…and then the 20 mins cycling to school with a unisex-flowery-designed raincoat. And yes not to forget that fiat car that caught you at the corner outside school and blessed you with a holy shower of mud and water straight from the road and you land in school expecting empathy from “PT Master”. How I wish teachers, including that PT guy, were made to wear whites with canvas shoes on Mondays…just to know how humanly impossible it was to land in school without being sprayed upon! And who would understand the anxiety and ulcers that came along with the excitement of Diwali…yes anxiety caused by dark clouds and cyclone announcements from that news aunty who occupied two-thirds of that poor 12inch TV screen that flickered everytime mom switched on the mixer grinder…remember the announcements that came from the kitchen…“Mixie poda poren!”…and you are expected to be prepared to lose the next 20 seconds of TV time! Like pilots announcing turbulence when you are about sip that free cognac that the hostess gave! Back to Diwali…painful indeed to be all dressed up and geared to blast the blow out of the neighborhood with that hard-fought “1000-wala”…and to see the rains come down smack in time! I can now imagine how happy moms and dads would have been to see that the brats finally had to take a break and let them watch those special Doordarshan shows which looked like live telecasts from a marriage hall with the amount of flowers they managed to squeeze into the screen! I prayed…just like you did…for the rains to go away…for little me to celebrate! Wonder if kids today go through those emotions that my generation did…maybe if it rains on Diwali this year they will get onto Twitter and Facebook and take that mindless quiz on “Which Diwali sweet were you born to be?”…or join that world-changing group titled ” The Relentless Movement to rename ‘Diwali’ as ‘IdliWa'”…or to leave a message in the status bar reading “Rains #$%@ed my Diwali…yours?”!…and yes mom doesn’t have to announce her “Mixie-poduraen” act anymore! We’ve come a long way…now lets pray for the rains to continue!

Hey! Guess the mixies have remained the same, but what has changed is the relative distance between the mixie and the television and of course the power cabling systems have evolved well enough to stop the grains on the screen and yeah we use more powerful satellites and dish antennas that have changed the power of signals being received by the TV set! And thanks for the grammar check!

Nostalgic… I guess I have now become old enough to curse the kids bursting those neverending walas cos I wanna watch the patti mandrams. 😛
It has become a way for the rich to show off! Crackers do cost a ‘bomb’! 🙂 Rambo Rajkumar, a stunt master and a producer who lived in my street would compete to see who litters the street more.